Alysson Bolognesi Prado

Cartography and geographic information systems as semiotic systems: a comparative analysis

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have grown rapidly, motivated by general trends of information technologies in expanding their potential uses. In line with this tendency, GIS must consider the familiarity of new users with Cartography and their traditional way of representing natural phenomena. This paper evaluates the expressive power of GIS relative to their cartographic elements, based on a Semiotic approach, which is concerned with understanding the construction and interpretation of maps as communication activities. Results obtained by comparing Cartographic and GIS semiotic systems show a great difference in the potential of communication for each of the domains.

Representing scientific associations through the lens of Actor-Network Theory

Knowledge on the social web presupposes to gather information about its current and potential users and document their relationships, interests and needs. A recent branch of sociology, the Actor-Network Theory or ANT, states that relations among human and nonhuman actors are equally important to comprehend social phenomena. Since scientists are potential users of huge computational support, their communities provide relevant cases for domain characterization and software design. This paper investigates the possibilities of using ANT to characterize a real instance of those social networks. The active role of nonhuman actors allows us to trace the relations based on material clues left behind by the actors, and also to bring forth features to be explored by social software. The results of this study present a graphical representation that allows quantitative and qualitative analysis of the social network, which may inform a better design of systems for those communities.

Capturing Semiotic and Social Factors of Organizational Evolution

Enterprises are always subject to internal and external pressures for change. Organizational Semiotics explains the structure of social norms, which allows a group of people to act together in a coordinated way for certain purposes. When a novelty requires reshaping this structure, Actor-Network Theory provides sociological insights to understand the involved factors. This paper delineates a method combining these theoretical sources for clarifying and representing the social forces involved in organizational changes. All actors – people, technical devices and other objects – are modeled in the same social level, tracing the flow of interests back to their sources, enabling to negotiate changes with the appropriate stakeholders.

Using OLAP Tools for e-HRM: A Case Study

In the growing challenge of managing people, Human Resources need effective artifacts to support decision making. On Line Analytical Processing is intended to make business information available for managers, and HR departments can now encompass this technology. This paper describes a project in which the authors built a Data Warehouse containing actual Human Resource data. This paper provides data models and shows their use through OLAP software and their presentation to end-users using a web portal. The authors also discuss the progress, and some obstacles of the project, from the IT staffs viewpoint.

Using Stakeholder and Pragmatic Analyses to Clarify the Scenario of Data Sharing in Scientific Software

Scientific communities can be seen as highly focused organizations, composed of people performing strict patterns of behavior. The growing body of scientific data available digitally, as well as new infrastructure of distributed access, has given to funding agencies, politicians and scientists in general the foresight of novel possibilities of discovery and innovation reusing those data. Many stakeholders now expect the data to be released, although relevant sharing rates are not always verified. In this paper, we propose a method to bring forward and represent these interests. Applying this method, we investigated how the availability of software capable of data storage and sharing can act upon their users, and whether it makes them more suitable to share research byproducts. Results show that, although current software empowers the scientists to carry out their own research, it still does not create a path through which users can make their interests spread among other stakeholders.

Blending theories towards understanding and designing socio-technical scenarios

To understand the interweaving of ubiquitous computer systems and their dynamic social relations different theoretical sources are necessary. Socially Aware Computing provides a deep understanding on how information systems emerge from and interact with the social context, whereas Actor-Network Theory represents a promising referential to explain how people and artifacts mutually actuate to render social structures. In this paper, we assess the paradigmatic compatibility of these two theories, proposing a blend, which provides a single basis to enrich the understanding of complex scenarios for designers of socially-aware technology, followed by an example of application in a real-world problem.

An X-ray of ICISO Portrayed Through the Lens of Actor-Network Theory

Any scientific community relies on a shared set of concepts and methods that, when well established and known, can guide its members to better solving research problems. Actor-Network Theory states that human and non-human entities – such as scientific literature – work together when a scientific fact is constructed. We applied this viewpoint as social network analysis technique, to assess the bibliographical data from the last two ICISO proceedings. The resulting graphs highlighted persons and publications acting as points of convergence for each conference edition. These findings lead to a recurring structure cored on Ronald Stamper and his publications, and the book Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering.

Addressing structural and dynamic features of scientific social networks through the lens of Actor-Network Theory

Knowledge on the social web presupposes gathering information about its current and potential users and document their relationships, interests and needs. A recent branch of sociology, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), states that relations among human and nonhuman actors are equally important to understand social phenomena. Since scientists are potential users of huge computational support, their communities provide relevant cases for domain characterization and software design. This paper investigates the possibilities of using ANT to characterize a real instance of those social networks. The active role of nonhuman actors allows us to trace the relations based on material clues left behind by the actors, and also to bring forth features to be explored by the social software. The results of a structural study offer a graphical representation that allows quantitative and qualitative analysis of the social network, while the temporal evolution case study suggests that cyclic associations are more likely to persist. These outcomes may inform a better design of Web 2.0 systems for those communities.